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Faculty Forum #3: Airing views on an Institutional Repository for Villanova Scholarship and Data

The final Faculty Forum in a series of three was held on Nov. 11 in the Connelly Center cinema. The Faculty Forums were co-sponsored by Falvey Memorial Library and the Office of Research and Graduate Programs (ORPG). Villanova faculty, researchers and students came to hear panelists discuss “the challenges that researchers now often face in relation to the dissemination and eventual disposition of the products of their scholarship …”

Alfonso (Al) Ortega, PhD, College of Engineering, and associate vice president for research and graduate programs, and the James R. Birle professor of energy technology in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, welcomed the attendees. Members of the Faculty Forum #3 panel included David Lacy, team leader for Library Technology Development, Falvey Memorial Library; Edward (Ed) Sion, PhD, Dept. of Astrophysics and Planetary Science, professor; A. Maria Toyoda, PhD, Dept. of Political Science and associate dean for Interdisciplinary Studies and Global Initiatives; Aaron Wemhoff, PhD, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, assistant professor; Ryan P. Jorn, PhD, Dept. of Chemistry, associate professor; Paul Hanouna, PhD, Dept. of Finance, Villanova School of Business (VSB); and Daniel McGee, director, strategic planning and consulting, University Information Technologies (UNIT).

David Lacy

David Lacy

The first panelist, David Lacy, presented the library’s perspective on the creation of an institutional repository “to provide a historical record of Villanova University’s scholarly output.” Lacy reported that Falvey has already begun to create a repository with its Community Bibliography, which is designed to house the entire publications of the University community. He discussed the configuration and workflow of an institutional repository and said, “[Its] ultimate success comes from an institutional mandate.”

Dr. Edward Sion discussed the research database containing the “Catalog of White Dwarf Stars” (a white dwarf is a star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel) and libraries of theoretical models constructed to compare data from Hubble Space Telescope and other orbiting observatories. Dr. Sion created the Catalog with a colleague, George P. McCook, PhD, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Hamada

A. Maria Toyoda

Dr. A. Maria Toyoda discussed a database, the Quinn-Toyoda CAPITAL, which she and Dennis P. Quinn, PhD, Georgetown University, created. The Quinn-Toyoda CAPITAL is a dataset used in her research on financial openness and political economic issues in East Asia.

The next presenter, Dr. Aaron Wemhoff, showed data from his research in molecular dynamics simulations and the data storage strategies he used at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Dr. Ryan P. Jorn, who joined Villanova’s Dept. of Chemistry in August 2013, discussed his research computational methods and the data generated in his quantitative chemistry studies.

The final researcher to address the need for an institutional repository, Dr. Paul Hanouna, discussed the data he has generated in his financial research and the resources already housed in the VSB Dept. of Finance.

Daniel McGee discussed UNIT’s views on creating an institutional repository for Villanova scholarship and data.

The speakers joined Dr. Ortega and Darren Poley, interim library director, for a lively question and answer session and open discussion with the audience.


Photos and article by Alice Bampton, digital image specialist and senior writer on the Communication and Publications Team.


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Last Modified: December 2, 2013

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